I spoke with the Avante people and they have a free shuttle for guests that will run you to the Googleplex and back.

@unknownuser said: Be careful what you ask for John. Good point. I should have asked my wife first. Maybe I'll move to Canada.

Hmm, i got the update, but did not find any news about SU 7.0 ?

milk chocolate my parents' two pekes, Shenwu and Wanli

Well actually the schools don't give away much. They just let you take the course, but if you want credit for it then you need to pay the fee. So instead of fighting the problem headon I was trying to suggest that maybe there might be a way to redirect the forces at work. LEts say Sue had a website called "Magna Cum Laude graduates of the Sue School of Architectural Illustration". So if you are a registered graduate of the course your best work and your CV can be posted in a gallery receiving international attention. So suddenly a lot of people are sneaking into her class. However, low and behold they find they learned something and they are becoming pretty good. Now they have no doubt about their skills, they would like them seen and certified to. Since they did not pay they can not been seen on Sue's architectural rendering site. So they pay for the course retroactively and now they are part of a respected gallery/showplace. I am just suggesting there might be more to gain from channeling human nature than fighting it head on. Not sure of the validity, but am just trying to float a concept. When I hit a brick wall I always like to back off and think about more productive approaches and study elegant solutions to similar problems.

Did you try this out Alan? I got the email advising that the process was completed and my 3D picture was available for viewing. It turned out okay Mike

Well: I'm an architect and I adore my job! I know it sounds normal and ordinary, but it's so.

yep, 'security theatre', that about describes things for the most part. When I visited the US a couple years ago I was electronically finger printed. There was no question of asking if this was okay by me. Just a matter of please put your index fingers on the pads please! There seems to be no standard way of doing things internationally. If all airport authorities adopted the same high tech standards I imagine it would speed things up a lot. One thing that I often wonder about is the lack of security on what people bring into airports. It is quite possible bring in a case with just about anything in it. Surely the proper place for luggage scanning is at the entry doors to the airport. Getting a bomb on-board a jet is capable of killing 2-300 people. Getting a bomb into a busy airport check-in area could be capable of killing many more people! Recently while at Malaga Airport in the SNN check-in line a noticed a guy leaving a large case beside some seats while me took a walk! I was a little nervous as he as walking away and called to him. I simply asked if he wouldn't mind taking his case with him. He laughed at me and advised that he was going to the toilet. He was and returned after 5 minutes! I was looking at the nearest column and wondering if I should ease my may towards it and stand on the other side, I didn't

i think i can see where your comign from there pav, simple yet effective And as for being a bit weird, of course it is, every object has a different meaning to everyone who uses it, and so lots of people will attacha major significance to some seemingly insignificant things.

my god, i ended up going clubbing in the end. feeling astonishingly rough now, couldn't quite do a 12 pinter, only got to 9. pav

Tiny place called 'Mermaid', on Prince Edward Island, Canada. Prince Edward Island is Canada's smallest Province. Only 138,000 people live here and little ol' Mermaid has just a few hundred of those.

You need to lcick in the window, then use your arrow keys to move the red square. its obviously been a while since oyuve played a game daniel

A really nice touching story . Knowing Boo I was expecting some crazy twist at the end. But no this is a really nice touching story.

I got hit by a tornado last year. What a mess! There wasn't much damage to the house but the trees...It took a month to get the streets cleared.

The Dark Knight will be better... all that needs to be said!

There are obviously many different fitness regimes...the important thing is to end up with buffed body, a clear, lucid, razor sharp mind and the ability to fell an adversery, if necessary, with a lightning fast, spinning kick to the jaw. My program generally goes some thing like this: Yesterday for example I woke at 10.30am [damn garbage truck]...lit my first Camel for the day and while waiting for the coffee to boil finished the dregs from the cask of red along with some cold left over Prawn and Garlic Pizza [seafood is very important in my diet] I walked to the letter box and back [heavy, forced breathing]...scoffed a couple of Alkaseltsas, poured myself a stiff Scotch to clear the mind and got down to work. At midday I jumped in the car drove down to Mackas for a couple of kingsize double cheese burgers with a family serve of chips and picked up a six pack of Fosters on the way back to wash lunch down. Did a a bit of work but realized I needed some well earned rest so flaked out on the vibrating bed [good for circulation]. Woken about 8 that night by the dog licking my face. I realised my consumption of red wine [good for the heart] for the day was way down so sprinted the 25 metres to th local pub and got the usual 4 litre cask of plonk and by the time I got back home my regular Pizza delivery had just arrived. After I finished the Pizzas I realised I had forgotten to get a couple of packs of smokes for the night so it was back to the pub [walking this time...more heavy breathing]. So I settled down in front of the TV for the night and finally hit the vibrating bed about 1 AM...the wine had run out anyway. Im going to be so fit I'll be dangerous!!!

I've gone off topic sort of in my last post. I can remember back when I was a little lad going to school. If we stepped out of line we got 'six of the best' across the bum with a leather or cain. I really believe it did no long lasting harm and put us on the straight and narrow. It was over and done with in a few minutes and life moved on. The lesson was remember as it was associated with some PAIN! These days corporal punishment is a big No No. I think this is mistake. I can understand this attitude in Europe as we have abolished capital punishment years ago but in much of the USA it still stands. I believe Texas still has the death sentence for certain crimes but teachers are not allowed to chastise students with the cain. This simply does not make sense to me. I would go as far to say its natural for a parent (teachers undertake the parents role in school) to physically chastise its offspring. Just look at a bitch feeding her litter. If one of the pups is misbehaving he gets a sharp rebuff that puts some manners into him. It works and is natural! Why should humans be any different?

They did check, the image was not tampered with...

@unknownuser said: ..and, guess what the top feature highlights will be: some greatly improved features for google warehouse and google earth!!! many new and ultra cool styles!!!!! I have to agree with numerobis; I kind of think google will focus on unimportant aspects like these -- things that fit into the larger 'google' world, but have little value for SU as an individual program. SU 6, for example, was a letdown. I don't care for layout and the line types are a waste of time. What else did it add? They talked a lot about improved ruby support, or something, but I haven't seen the improvements they said would happen because of that [Can any of you programmer-types comment on this at all?] SU is an amazing program for what it is and they should highlight that. While a very basic rendering engine for quick light studies would be nice, it would be a waste of time to include anything more than that, as there are so many great choices out there [free and otherwise]. The silly line types they've added feels to me just like a tacky photoshop edit -- hopefully they won't waste development time adding to that. This is what I would love to see: multi-core support better efficiency at handling large models a 'loft' feature the shadow glitch to be fixed These, I think, would fundamentally improve SU and its usability. While there are other things that I feel would be important to add, most of these can be found in the great rubys that have been coming out lately [think bevel, subdivision, ffd, etc.] If anything it would be nice for google to incorporate some of these plugins and clean them up a little.

Sounds like a great event Alan! Yummm... It sounds like it might be like a beer garten type thingie -- ie a big drinking hall with lots of beer and brew admirers. If that's what you are thinking then here's an add-on that might be another idea to consider. Many of the North American 'beer festivals' I've seen stories about on TV have what amounts to a trade show. Beer industry types all rent booths and a paying crowd come inside to see & talk with the vendors. The vendors can be everyone from brewers, beer nut makers, branded merchandise vendors, beer clubs, and anyone interested in the beer-drinking demographic. Such trade shows can in themselves be very big events with many visitors being lured by the free taste tests offered by some of the vendors. Regards, Ross